Agricultural and Applied Economics with a focus on Biotechnology and Natural Resources

Sunday, May 06, 2012

Hybrid Corn vs. Hybrid Cars

Which is better for the
environment, hybrid corn (with biotech traits) or hybrid cars? Which is most
easily adaptable and consumable on a scale large enough to have any meaningful
impact on the environment? Which can be achieved most easily through social
cooperation vs. manipulation and force?
I’ll answer these questions and more below.

According to research from PG
Economics, in 2009 alone, greenhouse gas reductions associated with
biotechnology were equivalent to removing 7.8 million cars from the
road. I like to contrast this with the stats related to the much beloved hybrid
car. Worldwide there have been only about 1.6 million hybrid cars sold
as of 2009. As far as cars on the road, the US and Japan have about 600,000.
And, I understand that the Obama Administration is calling for 1
million plug in hybrids on the highway by 2015.

So with hybrids we are
talking a few million cars at most, that are still on the road,
and still one way or another require electricity, coal, or gasoline,
which still creates pollution. And there is all of this hype and
interest in government setting mandates or creating subsidies to coerce consumers
into buying hybrids.

Of course, if we all drove
hybrids the impact might dwarf the 7.8 million figure above, but we would still
have to net out the effects of driving hybrids. It would take more than
7.8 million hybrids to match the green impact of biotech! And it might
take a lot of coercion by government. It seems a lot easier for me as a
consumer to freely choose to consume a mountain dew with high fructose corn
syrup derived from GMO corn than to make a huge change in my lifestyle and devotion
of resources to getting a hybrid!

And that’s not counting the
positive impact of biotech and pharmaceutical technologies in beef and dairy production.

" the carbon footprint for a gallon of
milk produced in 2007 was only 37 percent of that produced in 1944. Improved
efficiency has enabled the U.S. dairy industry to produce 186 billion pounds of
milk from 9.2 million cows in 2007, compared to only 117 billion pounds of milk
from 25.6 million cows in 1944. This has resulted in a 41 percent decrease in
the total carbon footprint for U.S. milk production."

Organic, Natural and Grass-Fed Beef: Profitability and
constraints to Production in the Midwestern U.S. Nicolas Acevedo John D.
Lawrence Margaret Smith August, 2006. Leopold Center for Sustainable
Agriculture)

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About Me

My primary interests are in applied econometrics with applications related to genomics, nutrition, health, and the environment. I have a quantitative and analytical background in the areas of applied economics and statistical genetics. I leverage my training with experience in machine learning and predictive modeling using SAS, R, and Python to solve problems. I can understand and produce peer reviewed research and discuss the application with a scientist, sales representative, or the customer whose problem ultimately drives the analysis. I can code my own estimators, execute SQL queries, parse text files, and visualize a social network.